HANNA TUULIKKI SOURCEMOUTH : LIQUIDBODY

Pepper House, Kalvathi Rd, Fort Kochi

(3-screen film & sound installation, vocal composition, choreography, visual score)

Commissioned for Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016, Hanna Tuulikki’s SOURCEMOUTH : LIQUIDBODY is an audiovisual installation which features an innovative visual-score, and a suite of films incorporating choreography, vocal composition, and costume. The installation flows between gesture and sound, inspired by the mnemonic landscapes of India and the relationships between river-systems and the human body.

At the heart of the work is a gestural sequence known as Nadi Varnana (River Description), from the Kutiyattam tradition – a form of Sanskrit theatre practiced in Kerala, and one of India's oldest living performing arts. Through a range of exaggerated gestures made with the eyes and hands, it embodies the watershed mimetically, representing the river cycle as a sequence of codified movements – the first rain on the mountaintop, rivulets becoming mountain streams, fast flowing river, and, the completion of a slow meander to the sea.

Beginning as a novice, over the course of a month-long residency in 2016, Tuulikki learned the Nadi Varnana cycle, tutored by her friend and mentor Kapila Venu, a gifted practitioner of Kutiyattam. Adapting the traditional sequence into a performance-to-camera, Tuulikki created three interlinked films. In the first, on the largest of screens, her silver-painted figure traces a fluvial line that enacts each stage of the river’s journey. Recalling early photographic experiments in chronophotography, the use of repetition and layering suggests a liquid body flowing from source to mouth.

Traditionally accompanied by mimetic percussion, which evokes the river’s formation and flow, Tuulikki has created a vocal composition for her version, from multiple-layered vocals whose drum-like sounds conjure up the original percussion, playfully and poetically depicting the sounds of rain, wind, insects, and the effects of water in motion.

Projected onto a second screen, the second film is a startling close up of Tuulikki’s open eyes performing choreographed gestures that signify the same transition from river source to mouth. Nadi Varnana requires the eyes to be receptors and projectors – seeing the river, becoming the river, and creating the river before the audience, inviting them to be aware of the bond between what is perceived and what is embodied.

As her eyes close shut, and the stage falls empty, on a third screen, Tuulikki’s disembodied mouth begins to incant instructions for the performance, using a melody that draws on the vocal chanting style of Kutiyattam: “take your eyes to the top of the high mountain, trace the summit with your fingers, open the brow, wait for the rain to fall…” Two visual scores are displayed nearby, transcribing the stages of the river embodied movement.

As the mouth closes, bringing an end to the song, the body gives corporeal expression to the lyrics, beginning a new cycle of the river score, flowing along the carrying stream of tradition – teacher to novice, observing eyes to embodiment, score to performance.

SOURCEMOUTH : LIQUIDBODY is a work of hydrological expression, as universal as it is local.

PERFORMANCE AT PEPPER HOUSE, 13.12.16, 1pm: Reflecting on the flow between the pedagogic directions and mimetic embodiment of a river as they are represented within the Kutiyattam tradition, Hanna Tuulikki will bring together the ‘source’ and ‘mouth’ of her installation, performing a sung incantation of instructions for her eyes and hands, along with their corresponding gestures.

Made in collaboration with Kapila Venu (Kutiyattam mentor & choreography); Daniel Warren (film); Pete Smith (final sound mix); Emily Millichip (costume maker); Beinn Watson (production consultant); Amy Porteous (production management). Supported by Creative Scotland, The British Council, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and CCA Glasgow. With special thanks to Kapila Venu, Di Ball and Mahin Manu.

www.hannatuulikki.org